Mixed Reviews for Council’s Newest Voices : Government: While Mark Ridley-Thomas is widely praised at City Hall, Mike Hernandez and Rita Walters have had their share of struggles.

There is a saying at Los Angeles City Hall: It takes a year just to find the bathroom and four years to become a real player on the City Council.

Mike Hernandez, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters have located the restrooms, all right. But less than two years into their terms, they have earned widely mixed marks as they try to complete the second part of the equation.

As representatives of districts that are among the city’s poorest and most ethnically diverse, the trio came to office in 1991 amid high expectations.

A year and a half later, their paths have diverged, with similar goals often overshadowed by markedly different styles and accomplishments. Ridley-Thomas has been widely acclaimed as the valedictorian of the class of ’91. Hernandez and Walters--both up for reelection this spring--have fans on the streets of their districts but have struggled to make the grade inside City Hall.

‘He Has Genuine Concern’

Mike Hernandez poured out his heart at a recent City Council meeting, pleading for more attention to the inner city. But one of his colleagues saw only an opportunity for a mocking wager.

Each time Hernandez cried: “We’ve got to be one city!”--as he did over and over--an aide to the smirking councilman on the sidelines giggled and dropped a nickel into her boss’s palm.

It is a speech Hernandez has repeated so often in his 18-month tenure that many other council members immediately signal their disdain: reading the newspaper, chatting with lobbyists or gathering a handful of change.

For Hernandez, universally described as one of the city’s most sincere and hard-working politicians, the dilemma has been how to turn his political passion into political action. Even allies say he must narrow his focus, learn to compromise and build coalitions, and tone down his rhetoric to get more accomplished.

“He has genuine concern in a lot of arenas,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre. “But he will be more successful when he focuses on a narrow arena, rather than the shotgun approach, which makes you a master of nothing.”

Hernandez, 40, was a community activist and business consultant to bail bondsmen when he replaced Gloria Molina on the council in August, 1991.

Now he spends much of his 70-hour workweek blistering bureaucrats and elected officials in the conviction that it will win more street lights, more libraries and more parks for his constituents. Hernandez’s district certainly needs them. Stretching from the immigrant neighborhoods west of downtown, past Dodger Stadium, to the heavily Latino barrios of Glassell Park, Highland Park and Lincoln Heights, it is the city’s poorest district.

Hernandez believes that only confrontation can squeeze concessions from a reluctant and complacent City Hall Establishment. He said he must expose bureaucrats who routinely lie and provoke council members who ignore him. There is no other way to get services for his district, he insists.

“When I first came in . . . they weren’t showing the respect they should have to this district. And they weren’t showing the respect to me. So I took ‘em on, one by one.”

Jockeying about the crowded Pico-Union neighborhood in his Chevy Blazer, ashtray overflowing, he proudly points to new street lights, fresh asphalt and subsidized housing projects he believes are the result of his confrontations.

Critics say Hernandez could get more if he narrowed his focus.

While the council was struggling to make up a $121-million shortage of funds in December, Hernandez exasperated colleagues by repeatedly questioning even the smallest items. Finally fed up, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky asked how much would be saved by Hernandez’s effort to stop one proposed audit. About “$300 or $400” answered a staff member. Undaunted, Hernandez argued: “We have audits now that nobody’s looking at.”

And his constant harangues at wealthier neighborhoods, which he accuses of taking resources from the inner city, have not won him many fans around the council horseshoe.

“Apparently he gets a thrill out of bashing the suburban areas with shame,” said a colleague from a far more prosperous district, who, like many sources in this story, asked to remain anonymous for fear of alienating a councilman. “But he hasn’t turned that into an effective policy that helps his area.”

The displeasure with Hernandez’s actions does not appear to extend into his district, where most activists say they like his efforts to bring them more services and appreciate the way he attends nearly every forum, often sitting modestly in the back just to listen to neighbors’ complaints.

Hernandez impressed his constituents when he ventured onto the streets immediately after last year’s riots. While some council members huddled in their offices or made pronouncements from the City Hall steps, Hernandez was shouting in Spanish to dazed Pico-Union residents: “We are going to build, not destroy, together!” Later he delivered brooms and shovels to street-cleaning volunteers and fought immigration officials to stop deportations during the crisis.

“He knows in helping our community he is not going to get that much political support, because they cannot vote,” said Carlos Vaquerano, a social service administrator for Central American immigrants who fill the Pico-Union neighborhood. “But despite that, he is doing as much as he can to help this community.”

One of the Stars’

Mark Ridley-Thomas eschews the politics of confrontation in favor of compromise and artful manipulation.

A bleary-eyed City Council found out how well the 8th District lawmaker has learned to play the political game during a grueling, eight-hour budget hearing in December.

The council needed 10 votes to approve a business tax increase that would close the final gap in the $121-million shortfall. As they prepared to vote, Ridley-Thomas quietly attached an amendment for a waiver of the tax in impoverished areas, such as his district, to encourage new businesses.

Some lawmakers groused but nonetheless went along rather than risk busting a fragile budget compromise.

“He got something very important for his district--economic development--as part of something else,” recalled Councilman Joel Wachs. “I thought it was a brilliant stroke on his part.”

Contrary to his early image as an aloof, rigidly professorial man or as a race-fixated zealot, Ridley-Thomas has taken well to the clubby atmosphere inside City Hall with a droll sense of humor and a willingness to compromise.

Some feared that would not be the case when he arrived in 1991 after 10 years as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. One colleague said Ridley-Thomas was viewed as a “bomb thrower”--someone who regularly made the evening news with calls for the removal of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, someone who engaged in an early, biting confrontation with grandfatherly Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

The council’s oldest member, who is white, called Ridley-Thomas “curly.” The newcomer, an African-American and the council’s youngest member at 38, answered: “Don’t ever say that again!”

The pair soon made up and agreed that the comment was not intended to be racial. But Ridley-Thomas’ retort still resonates--a fact he demonstrates by pulling out a file of hate mail and by quoting the constituents who still tell him: “It made me proud and gave me more reason to stand up.”

Such emotional interludes have been the exception in a tenure that has thrived because of its cool planning and exacting organization. Aided by a staff that Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani describes as “the best on the City Council,” Ridley-Thomas has won some legislative coups.

He secured approval of a measure to prevent city deposits in banks with discriminatory loan practices and a companion law to promote investment in minority-owned institutions. He directed a special committee on water rates that shifted more of the fee burden away from the inner city and onto the suburbs. And he passed a planning law that allows liquor store owners who lost their businesses in the riots to build larger structures if they agree to discontinue alcohol sales.

He has also attempted to make city services more accessible to constituents by building a “mini-City Hall” on Vermont Avenue in his South-Central Los Angeles district. The first structure burned down in the riots, two weeks before it was to open, but its replacement is scheduled to open this spring.

A measure of Ridley-Thomas’ growing power is his expanded assignments--including appointment as head of a riot recovery committee and as a member of the new, regional Metropolitan Transit Authority board.

He captured another prize in last year’s redistricting when he added much of the Crenshaw district--the city’s wealthiest black enclave--to his turf.

Ridley-Thomas has his detractors--from police union officials who said his criticism of police hindered a quick response to the riots, to Korean-Americans who say he has slowed their efforts to rebuild businesses.

But his support is broad. One of City Hall’s premier insiders, lobbyist Doug Ring, predicts that Ridley-Thomas will become “one of the stars” on the council. Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell, a consummate outsider, lauds the councilman for bringing “a new and inspiring sense of activism” to City Hall.

I Choose to Be a Thermostat’

The Los Angeles City Council last week got another glimpse of what Rita Walters does best: stand on her principles.

More than two dozen constituents were urging her to go along with a plan to erect a fence around a new downtown park, saying it would be a nighttime magnet for drugs and violence otherwise.

Many spoke for the fence at Grand Hope Park and none against, but onetime civil rights activist Walters could not be moved from a core belief: “Public spaces should be open spaces,” she repeated later. “If it’s public, it should be open to everyone.”

Walters, 62, suffered not only a loss of goodwill with some constituents but an embarrassing defeat in her own district: The council approved the fence, 12 to 2.

Such strict philosophical stands have earned Walters mixed reviews in her 19 months as a councilwoman, an office she won in a special election after the death of venerable Councilman Gilbert Lindsay.

Yaroslavsky said: “She does what she thinks is right. She has impeccable integrity.” But a City Hall lobbyist complained: “She is a principled person, but she is inflexible in her principles. Once she has made up her mind, you play hell in moving her.”

Critics at City Hall, and there are many, say Walters’ problems were compounded because she took months to hire a staff. Preoccupied by hiring, Walters was slow to deal with many issues that came before her office, the detractors say.

Developers of the $100-million Disney Concert Hall fretted that Walters’ tinkering with a development agreement shortly after taking office would jeopardize an important deadline for receiving an endowment from the Walt Disney family. “She didn’t know what was going on,” said one person who participated in the negotiations. “It was very painful.”

Walters points out that the Bunker Hill concert hall is on schedule--and with a program she negotiated to encourage hiring of construction workers from nearby neighborhoods and to improve access for her constituents to Philharmonic tickets and classes.

After taking over as chairwoman of the Public Works Committee, she cut meeting agendas in half--sometimes adding months to the wait to close streets, install street lights and build sidewalks.

Walters said she shortened meetings to make them less onerous for residents, adding that many matters used to fly through without proper deliberation.

Criticism from within City Hall apparently has not tainted the image of the onetime schoolteacher and former school board member among a key support group--block clubs. She meets regularly with the organizations and has encouraged the opening of up to 20 new clubs.

“Twenty years of neglect can’t be fixed in a year and a half, so I think she is doing a pretty good job,” said Richard Marshall, an activist on 53rd Street.

In the wake of the riots, Walters has gained wide acclaim as the sworn enemy of liquor stores. Her ordinance has forced the stores and other controversial projects--such as swap meets and gun stores--to undergo public hearings and face stricter operating conditions.

But downtown business interests--important power players and campaign contributors in the 9th District--have complained that Walters is a ponderous decision maker, if not hostile to their interests.

They protested when Walters did not oppose increased regulation on business--such as an ordinance to control use of video display terminals. They groused that she was not a strong enough opponent of cuts in the Community Redevelopment Agency budget--even though her district is the agency’s biggest beneficiary. And they wondered why she voted against expanding downtown’s Grand Central Market.

“There is increasing concern that she sees business as the enemy and, frankly, we are tired of it,” said one executive.

Walters said she had her reasons for each position: supporting VDT regulations because of health concerns, agreeing to CRA budget cuts to help the rest of the city, and opposing the Central Market expansion because the city did not receive partial ownership, as a city report recommended.

Each decision alienated downtown powerbrokers.

Walters is unmoved.

“You can either be a thermometer or you can be a thermostat,” Walters said. “You can register the temperature of your district or set it. And I choose to be a thermostat.”

Staff writers Greg Krikorian and Sandy Banks contributed to this story.

Profile: Rita Walters Born: Aug. 14, 1930, in Chicago. Residence: 9th District since 1991. Education: Shaw University, bachelor’s degree in liberal studies; MBA degree from UCLA. Career highlights: Former 12-year member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. Interests: Reading. Family: Divorced, with three children.

Profile: Mark Ridley-Thomas Born: Nov. 6, 1954, in Los Angeles. Residence: 8th District since 1979. Education: Immaculate Heart College, master of arts, bachelor of arts; USC, doctorate. Career highlights: Former executive director, Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. Interests: Bicycling and reading. Family: Married, with twin boys.

Profile: Mike Hernandez Born: Dec. 4, 1952, in Pleasanton, Calif. Residence: 1st District since 1962. Education: Occidental College, bachelor of arts in polytechnic science. Career highlights: Bail bondsman and former honorary mayor of Highland Park. Interests: Reading and rock collecting. Family: Married, with two children.